Rio

A long week in Rio was great especially since the rain cleared overnight
and stayed away for at least 6 days.  We were rather uncomfortably
berthed at one of the best Iate Clube's of Rio at the foot of sugarloaf
mountain and under the watchfull eye of Jesus, who occasionally pooped
out of the clouds. Some swell managed to make it around the corner and
through the islands and rocks that mark the entrance to Guanabaran bay.
We had again a long list of jobs to do and I managed to get myself in
the mast instead of the supermarket to work on our rig. Quite a nice
change though I did miss the aircon in the supermarket and managed to
get a few nice big bruises (courtesey of the earlier mentioned swell).
The Iate club had a few good bars and restarants, 3 hangars full of
dinghies (none to be used by us  :-() a swimming pool, gym, and was
guarded 24 hours a day. After work there were plenty of leisure
possibilies, most of which included caiparinha's. I went on a ladies
night (spanish german dutch initiative) had a night stroll on the beach,
drank coconut milk from the the coconut on copacabana beach. We ate the
most wonderfull steak immaginable (picana) and we even managed to do an
unforgettable team effort is Samba dancing. Caiparinha's certainly
loosen up even the most stiff joints :-) One of the highlights was going
on a corporate sail with Sir Robin Knox Johnstione and Thorben Grael on
board. The first on the coffeegrinder trimming to my command and the
latter at the helm. Needless to say we won this inshore race. This was
by the way a wonderfull opportunity to see what the bay was like since
upon arrival it was dark and cloudy. Next day we bumped into one of the
corporate gusts who liked it so much that he is now considering signing
up for the next race...
All good things sadly come to an end and the southern Atlantic was
calling. After a long week of jobs, Caiparinha's, Copacabana and Ipanema
beach great meat and fresh fruit it was time to leave. Also it started
to rain again, so no real reason to stay any longer... 

finish

After a few agonising hours in which the wind died and came back and
died and came back again and then changed direction and then again
changed direction and every time the GPS gave us a later earlier and
later and then again earlier estimated time of arrival we actually
managed to get quicker to the line then we thought. One more tack to
stay free from the rocks and that was it! First place. We were elated
and glad it was finally over. The way to Rio we did under engine and
with the main sail up. On the coast it was thundering and we ended up in
one of those thundery squalls. First it started to rain; it was
bucketing down! Then the wind started to pick up and within 5 minutes we
went from 6 knots to 36 knots and possibly more but I stopped looking as
I was too busy hoping the boom would not hit the water and we'd wipe
out (we had the full main up and the wind on the beam and in order to
remain upright and in control it was eased out quite a lot). After ten
minutes the wind died and we continued our journey to Rio in a drizzle
and in the dark. No grand-entree unfortunately but at the IATE CLUBE do
Rio loads of team mates and crews from other teams and family were
seeing us in. The beer tasted fantastic and it was really great to see
so many familiar faces.

Back to civilisation

Our whale show marked the end of the solitude the vast Atlantic Ocean
brought us. We have been moving closer and closer to the Brazilian
shore. The first signs of land we passed were the islands in the
archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. The signs of nearby land were the
booby's (ganet like sea birds) that accompanied the boat for hours on
end and made for some good enterntainment. These birds feed on flying
fish and our presence made the flying fish fly and the booby's dive. As
we came closer to the coast (but still several hundred miles off) other
ships became more common again. The majority of the ships we
encountered were bulk carriers heading in an opposite direction.
Unfortunately they were too far away to spot their names or make them
visible on AIS so I can't say whether it was one of Corus's ore or
pellet cargoes... The last two night as we were as near as 50-80
miles to the coast we could make out the lights of cities like Vitoria
as they are reflected on the clouds. For the passed 16 hours we have
been cruising between oil rigs, production and drilling ships,
supply-vessels and tankers. Very impressive kit and so much of it so
close together. Trust me this beats the North Sea in terms of the
size of the kit. Our depth sounder is picking up signs of the sea bottom
again. Yes land is near and so is a cold beer!  

Post equator and 150 miles off the finish line

Some 8 days ago (?), I seem to have lost count of them, we have passed
the equator and were visted by King Neptune who had to grant us
permission to travel through his kingdom. He was in rather good spirits
and after drinking his nectar and showing our worthyness we were all
allowed to pass and continue on our way to Rio. The white sails we had
put up in de Doldrums soon made way for the spinaker again and the days
passed in a rather boring fashion. When we came closer to the Brazilian
coast things started to get more exiting. The weather forecast for the
last days towards the finish showed light airs and we were already in
them. Our competition was eating away on our lead and we all got a bit
nervous: is 120 miles lead enough? How can we make sure they will not
overtake us in the last days or even hours. All this exitement made for
some interesting team dynamics gossip sessions, grumpyness etc. All of
which disappeared when we were increasing our lead again...
For two days now we have been experiencing lots of action. Yesterday we
nearly lost our spinaker block from the top of the mast, this happened
as we were in our happy hour celebrating a birthday with a nice lunch.
Ditch the lunch, spinaker down, repack it, fix the block and up with the
sail again. It is becoming more and more normal now all these emergency
spi drops and hoists. To top it all up while we were sorting the sail
out we were treated to a fantastic display of jumping right whales: big
ones, babies, close by and far away it was absolutely magnificent to
watch! I cannot wait until we start leg 2 and we will see more of them!
Ever since the whale show things have been changing constantly. The wind
has changed direction by tens of degrees every hour almost,we had rain,
lightning, the windspeed has gone up and down and we were in very light
airs for what seemed ages. Plenty of fiddleing around with sail
positions and configurations. We have had 4 sail changes last night and
this morning we tacked, hoisted the spinaker and gybed within 4 hours
just to stay on course to the finish line: crazy but fun ;-)! Contrary
to what our GRIB-files (grid with windspeeds and directions that is laid
over our chart, all digital of course) indicate we are currently flying
towards the finish line with 9 knots. Let's hope the GRIB-file is wrong
all the way and we can keep this wind all the way to the finish
line (which is now at Cabo Frio and not Rio anymore). 140 miles
to go... let's hope we are there first. From the finish it is another 70
miles to Rio, but that we can do in a straight line under engine
(provided our gearbox does not fail us).
 
 
 

The Doldrums.

Two  days after leaving Cape Verde to our left and having spent days to
get West our studies of the infanmous Doldrums showed that passing them
westerly would land us in the worst part of them so we headed nackEast.
I had the feeling we spend at least a day going nowhere and it fel like
waiting for the inevitable to happen. Like marmots heading for the
abyss. Though there aare no signposts telling you when you have arrived
at the doldrums actually being there is obvious. The clouds are enormous
and the variety of species makes for a great chane compared to the
fluffy tradewind clouds. The wind is changing almost every half hour and
as a result our 17 dat spinaker run has come to n end. Our 68 foot
rolling world has changed into a heaving and listing one. We are all
handicapped and need to learn how to move on the boat again. My loo
visit was an interesting experience and the ubicle seemed too small to
pull up my trousers again. Luckily there was no-one about. We have had a
small problem with our watermaker and it seemed we were on our way to
loose our first position in in the fleet in order to obtain additional
fresh water but luckily we managed to get the thing going again.
Hopefully we can keep our current speed and the wind up and squeeze out
of the Doldrums without much problem.    

4 October: The trade winds

After our wind finding mission we finally reached the north east trade
winds off the coast of Africa and we have been saiing in them for three
days now. Spinaker up and a steady 15 to 20 knots of wind.The
temperature on board and the humidity are quite hard to deal with.
Everything is damp and just lifting a finger is enough to make you
sweat. Being back in the lead and being the first to reach the Cape
Verde Islands definitely helps keeping our spirits up. Also the
relentless cooking efforts (I think there is a little competition going
on between two of our crew) contribute. I must say I'd rather stay out
of the galley at the moment because it is hellishly warm in there. Last
night I was jumped on by a flying fish. They are really spectacular to
watch as they swerm just over the wave crests like small blueish birds.
They smell awfull and you only have to follow your nose to track them on
the deck. It goes without saying that we want them back in the water
asap. With they slippery scales that poses a bit of a challenge but adds
to the comedy on deck.
Being in the trade winds in fairly boring though: spinaker up, the
occasional 20 degree wind shift, a gybe and that schedule repeats itself
in a random order. We have not suffered any mishaps except for today
when durng a gybe we had two poles up and then the sheet broke free from
one of the poles. Clew gone and no sheet to pull the spinaker in on
because that was 3m above the water on the other pole. Luckily we
managed to catch the loose clew, take the spinaker in, repack it and
launch it again, from  the hatch on the new tack. No damage to sail or
kit and it probably took us 5 min longer than a normal gybe.
Another highlight was crossing paths with a whale. The whale (we think
it was a Minke whale) swam in opposite direction to us and passed at 30m
from the boat. everybody was exited. In addition to the whale we have
seen turtles, sharks, sea birds and dolphins, but all in fairly low
quantities :-(
It is fascinating to realise that the winds that carry us south at the
moment have been in place for centuries and have brought so much wealth
to Europe (and made it posible for me to do what I am doing at the
moment) but were also the root of many of the inequality issues we are
experiencing in the world today.
Cape Verde in a few hours but unfortunately in the dark or in the
shimmer of the full moon... We'll see.

30 Sep never knew

six hours could last so long! 26deg 15 min North, 15 deg 43 min West.
The wind has finally abondoned us. The spinaker (still our very vesatile
heavy weight) had to make way for the windseeker and the windseeking
game started. A very intense game it is in the heat of the sun. Do wes
top before the next patch o breeze is ging to arrive or are our 35
tonnes enough to keep us going until the next push by the wind. The
track on our chartplotter looks like an artists impression of a mountain
range. We have tried many different varieties of water additives as  the
bland stuff our watermaker produces does not satisfy the taste buds and
we needed to get a few liters down our throats.All this in our never
ending 6 hour afternoon watch. Now down for 6 hrs sleep to rejuvenate
for a 6 hr night watch (midnight to 6) as we have just decided to swap
our 4 hr nightwatches to the daytime and the 6 hr daytime watches to the
night time.

30 Sep 0200-0600 watch

The most interesting of the watches in our watch system is the 0200-0600
watch. First of all it is the time your body is programmed to be asleep
and secondly it is the coldest and darkest part of the night. When
coming on at 2 in the night you first have to wake up, which is quite a
challenge because having had time off from 2200 to 0200 does not
necessarily mean you have actually been sleeping for 4 hours. In my case
sleep does not narturally happen at 2200 and by the time it is 0200 I
am in my deepest sleep, so not so awake. The first hour on deck I spend
waking up. After an hour I usually take over the helm because not many
people are yet able to steer the boat at night because the darkness
works disorientating. Then the battle with the eyelids starts:
open, closed, open, closed... no no OPEN!!! It is amazing how heavy
eyelids can be. I managed to nod off while steering the boat,not being
able to say for certain whether I was dreaming of the wind indicator in
the mast or whether I was actually looking at it. This happens
continuously and feels rather unreal. The second aspect of this watch is
the darkness itself. The moon usually disappeers behind the horizon
sometime before or during the 0200-0600 watch and we are trying to use
as little artificial light as possible. On a clear night (and we have
been very lucky so far) the stars and planets provide enough light to
make out the shape of the spinaker and the horizon so it is easy to
orientate yourself. Otherwise we are trying to memorise where every
rope, block and cleat or jammer is and work from memeory using a torch
as little as possible. The 0200-0600 watch also has it advantages:
sailing ain the dark is very challenging and doing a good job is
extremeley rewarding. The nights so far have been absolutely beautifull.
All different from each other but gorgeous. This morning was definitely
one not to forget. The winds were really light, the sea was like a
mirror, the starts bright and both venus and saturn's light was
reflected in the water. Keeping the boat at speed meant concentrated
helming, staying put not moving around much and all of us on watch just
turned silent. Apart from the occasional flog of the sails all we could
hear were the ripples the boat created in the water. The algae did their
usual job and turned every ripple into a bright lightened stripe on the
water. Fantastic! I am hooked.
Did I alreay mention we have taken the lead in the fleet for now?

29 Sep through the CAnaries, beans and the mysterious landing of the squid

It took us a day and a half too navigate the Canary islands. Shall we go
east west or through the middle and if the latter between which islands
to pass??? Questions which were eventually answered by the weather
forecast: through the islands keeping Gran Canaria on our right and
Fuerteventura on our left.  Yesterday evening we reached Lanzarote,
visible through the street lights in the villages instead of the lights
that are on the charts, but we never saw. This morning we had
Fuerteventura already on our left hand side and enjoyed a beautiful
sunrise over the volcanic hills of the island. We managed to keep the
speed and our spinaker up. The wear problems we are having with our
sheets and guys has been tackeled and we can now fly 'the kite' for long
periods on end without having to gybe to swap them. As I am writing this
we are leaving the Canaries behind us and apart from a short dip in the
windspeed things are looking great: we have moved up in the fleet to 2nd
or 3rd place. The sailing is still very interesting with changing wind
speeds and changing wind directions. We are learning how to maximise use
of our heavy weight spinaker so we don't have to use the supersized
light and medium weight ones, which have caused some other boats in the
fleet serious headaches and in one case even serious injury while
unwrapping/cutting it from the forestay.
Unfortunately we had some injury too on the boat. Despite the calm seas
and favourable winds the sea is still unpredictable: at the moment
someone was pooring hot water to make tea one odd wave hit the boat and
our teammate sustained 2nd degree burns on het shoulder. Luckiliy our
two surgeons on board are great with painkillers and we sent the
victim to bed painfree and in a drug haze. She's doing already a lot
better.
 
Our big shopping operation to supply the boat with food is causing a few
headaches, wind and swift bowel movements: beans for 3 days in a row is
maybe a bit too much... Fortunately we have a number of really creative
chefs on board who manage to make the best food out of whatever we have
lying around as left overs, so we may be able to tackle the 3 day bean
fest in the next rotation of our menu. Today the left over porridge was
turned into a crunchy oats fritter which was a nice desert for lunch.
Evaporated milk with vanilla sugar works well as a replacement of
custard on a crumble, rhubarb juice from a can tastes really good and
there are loads of other things we can do with 'canned stuff'. The next
step would be to use the fresh squid sweepings off the deck. To our
surprise we have found several squid (inktvis) on deck the last few
days. Our deck is about 1.3m out of the water so quite a climb up from
sea level. How do they get on deck? Do they fly? Do the dolphins throw
them at us to make us do tricks?
Sad point to note here is that we have actually seen very few dolphins
'till now and only just this minute spotted our first whale. off for nap
now.

27 Sep Ocean fresh

Just had a shower on the platform at the back of the boat. A couple of
buckets of fresh but not cold sea water, some shampoo and soap, a
nailbrush and sponge and a fresh water rinse afterwards: I feel like
new.
The weather is definitely improving as we are heading further south.
even though it is overcast with some occasional sun it is becoming
obvious that we are now in Africa and not in autumn-ie Europe anymore.
We are now 420 nautical miles west of Kenita on the Moroccan coast and
162 miles north east of Madeira. The wind is still behind us and we are
exchanging spinaker for poled out headsail (mainsail and headsail on
different sides of the boat) and back. Unfortunately the startegy we
have chosen is not paying off too well. We are in 4th place and trying
to keep up with the lead group. Cape Breton Island is tryng to catch up
with us. As long as we sail the boat as fast as possible in th egiven
circumstances I am confident we will not fall back any further.
Last night the sailing was to  my liking: light breeze (15kts) on our
stern, spinaker up, few waves but enough to make for some concentrated
helming and trimming (none of that muscle sailing in heavy waves and big
winds (20-25kts) we had the last few days). We crossed paths with a ship
and had two dolphins accompanying us for a short while. The algae supply
us with the firworks: the sea sparkles on our bow, the dolphin tracks
light up in the water and our wake and the occasional breaking wave
crest emit shimmers of light. Add to that the moon and stars. Need I say
more.

26 Sep 180 miles west of Lisbon

Leaving the bay of biscay has left me a bit puzzled: normally storms
would hit you in the face going south and waves would build where the
ocean floor meets the co ntinental shelf.This time however we had a
lovely breeze, spinaker up and the depth sounder changing from 120m to
no more readings. We discovered how quickly our spinaker gear wears as
we snapped more spectra (the "unbreakable" tough fibre that forms the
core of all our ropes on board)loops just as we were racing closely with
the other boaqts. Funny how every boat chooses to go in a certain
direction and that we then all meet in more or less the same place in
the middle of the night in somewhere in the bay of biscay.
 
Passing the famous Cape Finisterre was a highlight. We passed the shore
so close that there was a mobile phone signal. Everybody took advantage
of this.
 
Now we are sailing in the Atlantic Ocean and we still have the wind
behind us. The boat rolls along nicely and we are making good speed. The
first test run of all the shopping we did is delivering siome good
feedback. Catering packages from the makro underperform on quantity some
meals just don't work (fish pie) but there is also some inspiring
innovative cooking going on. Highlight is fresh bread every morning.
 
In case you wondered: the ocean is really blue. Lunchtime now.

22 sep and off we go

It was early this morning that we slipped our mooring lines in La
Rochelle to (I still cannot believe it) Rio de Janeiro. Unlike our race
from Hull to La Rochelle, this one had by no means a flying start. We
were escorted to the start area in the bay by Joshua which is the yacht
of the legendary french sailor Bernard Moitissier. While waiting for our
start the wind started to come down and down and down. Not mucgh
exitement when going over the line because all boats were trying to
maintain some speed and not cross the line early. We had our spinaker up
amd manage to stay ahead of the competition. After 3 hours of very
light winds and a flogging spinaker finally the wind picked up abit
and we quickly changed to a windseeker (a very special light winds
sail) and then on to our yankee 1 (our biggerst fore sail out of the 3)
Just before a heavy tide would turn against us when we were sailing ourt
of the little bay La Rochelle is located on the wind really picked up
and we managed to pull away from the fleet. Now we are sailing in
beautful circumstances into the sunset on the Bay of Biscay. The
channel and north sea chop is slowly changing into the atlantic swell.
Not sure I really like it though... The shepherd pie is in the oven and
Australia are on our heels as we head into our first night of many at
sea/ocean.